How To Use The &nearme Search Operator For Local SEO

Transcription:

Hi, I’m Chris Long with Go Fish Digital and welcome to another episode of “60 Second SEO”.

Today we’re going to talk about how you can use the “near=” operator to really localize any search that you want.

So let’s say I’m a franchise and I represent a fence repair company, and I want to see what “fence repair near me” queries look like in different geographies.

So here I have one pulled up. I can see one from my local area. But let’s say I wanted to enter the New Orleans market and I wanted to see, “Hey, what do the rankings look like there?”

So what I can do is I can actually take a look at individual ZIP codes. Here I’m going to search for “new orleans zip code”, found different ones. Let’s take this one. And let’s say we want to see what do the rankings look like when I search from the ZIP code.

So go back to our original search for “fences near me”. And at the end of the URL in Google, I can type in “&near=” and then our ZIP code. Click enter. And here you can see that we get the search results for this individual ZIP code.

So this is a really great way to be able to emulate the local search results of really any location that you want. It’s great when you’re dealing with a localized business and want to see, “Hey, how do I rank across different geographies?”

You can quickly be able to manipulate the search results and see how you do this by using your ZIP choice, using the “near=” command, and appending that to the end of any search result URL that you want.

About Chris Long

Chris Long is the VP of Marketing at Go Fish Digital. With 10+ years of SEO experience, Chris works unique problems and advanced search situations to help clients improve organic traffic through a deep understanding of Google's algorithm and web technology. Chris has advised on the search strategies for clients such as GEICO, Adobe & The New York Times. He is a contributor for Moz, Search Engine Land, and Search Engine Journal. He is also a speaker at industry conferences such as MozCon, SMX East, BrightonSEO and more.